So it’s no secret that I’ve been lacking in motivation for quite a long time now. When I was in school, I always had a bunch of things to work towards all at once, with goals laid out for me. Every class had a syllabus that laid out what was expected; my volunteer positions had specific goals to them from the very first day I started; my on-campus jobs basically came with a check-list of what needed to get done. I never had to sit down and think, “Ok, what goals should I be setting? What should I be working towards?”

In my second year of school, I picked a career path and started working towards that in school. After that, once that goal was set in motion….. I basically stopped. I took one crappy piece of advice after another, avoided making any real goals of my own, and just kept working towards whatever was laid out before me.

Then things fell to shit, and I’ve just never recovered.

To make a long story short, the career I was working towards changed their entry-level requirements. It was too late in my schooling to change my path, and I was in complete shock. I was recovering from a sudden and pretty serious illness, my career was snatched out of my hands before I came anywhere close to crasping it, and I was running out of time to collect student loans and afford to finish school.

What should I have done? Well, I should’ve started looking into what careers I was qualified for. I mean, a Criminology degree seems pretty specific, and I have no clue what to do with it. I should have sat down and figured out what the hell I was going to start working towards now that things had fallen apart.

Instead, I just kinda skated along. Once I graduated, I just started applying for whatever. I didn’t bother taking my education and looking at what I could do with it. Basically, I wasted years and years letting that one forced career change ruin me. Instead of picking my ass back up and getting it into gear, I just kinda laid down and gave up.

And now, I work Customer Service and run a cash register.

I let five years of working through school, fives years of volunteering, five years of on-campus work experience, just go to waste. I completely lost all my motivation to move forward in my life, and made no effort to get it back.

So here I am at 34 years old. I rent a bedroom in a student rental house owned by my ex-boyfriend’s family. My boyfriend and my cat live with me. For the summer, I’m working 6 days a week trying to bank up as many hours as I can before our store hours die off for the fall. I’m watching all of my friends my age (and even younger ones) get married, buy homes, have kids……. and I’m stuck here.

So I’m working towards that whole goal setting thing. I need to motivate myself, get my life back on track, and build a life for myself.

Well Sunshine, off to work yet again. The damn store isn’t going to close itself tonight.